Better Physics: Havok 4 On Beta Grid
Just a few days ago, I wrote elsewhere how a better physics engine could make some changes in virtual worlds - and today (on my birthday, no less) I find out that Havok 4 is on the Beta grid. Even as I write this, I am downloading the beta client so I can poke around on the Beta grid over the weekend. That is a first for me.
While there is a lot of talk about what the Havok 4 engine can and cannot do (including a good interview with Andrew Linden), but I'll poke around over the next few days and post my own observations. Since the Havok 4 engine does add some new benefits, it stands to reason that the Linden Scripting Language will have to change to accomodate the benefits (Andrew spoke of 'maybe even specialized airplane vehicles (lift/drag/stall-speed parameters)'), but those changes don't seem readily apparent at this time.
The Havok 4 Beta release notes are here, and the Wiki page on Havok 4 is here.
In the grand scheme of things, I don't know that the physics engine will balance the VAT. Odd how these announcements came out on the same day.
Technorati Tags: 
Delicious
Digg
Technorati
I may have misread it...
But what I took away from the announcement (and a brief sojourn on the Beta Grid) was that, for the present moment, Havoc 4 will simply be used to replicate the behavior of the current, outdated physics engine, with an eye to making it run faster and more reliably. So no huge changes, at least until the first stage of this is stable and performance gains are realized on the regular grid.